I find the court's argument strong here. You pay a salary, you pay FICA, you pay unemployment insurance, you pay pension benefits, you pay vacation time, holidays, and so on. And you provide health insurance benefits. Some of those who have health insurance will use contraceptives. Just like some will use their salaries for gambling, or fornication, or contraception, or alcohol, or illegal drugs, or whatever else the religion of the employer thinks is wrong. Health insurance is a benefit like any other, for purposes of this analysis.
Steve On Sep 29, 2012, at 11:11 PM, Brad Pardee wrote: > Second, they state, “[T]he contribution to a health care plan has no more > than a de minimus impact on the plaintiff’s religious beliefs than paying > salaries and other benefits to employees.” The parallel is false, though. > There are no limitations on what an employee can do with his salary (apart > from things that are illegal on their own, i.e., drugs). A health care plan, > however, is not open-ended. It lays out specifically what the plan pays for > and how much. Certain procedures are covered. Certain procedures are not. > Using certain providers will result in a different deductible or copy than > using others. -- Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017 Associate Director, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice http://iipsj.org Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567 http://iipsj.com/SDJ/ "A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used." Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Towne v. Eisner, 245 U.S. 418, 425 (1918)
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